Day 3 - 1 John 2:12-17

12 I am writing to you who are God’s children
    because your sins have been forgiven through Jesus.
13 I am writing to you who are mature in the faith
    because you know Christ, who existed from the beginning.
I am writing to you who are young in the faith
    because you have won your battle with the evil one.
14 I have written to you who are God’s children
    because you know the Father.
I have written to you who are mature in the faith
    because you know Christ, who existed from the beginning.
I have written to you who are young in the faith
    because you are strong.
God’s word lives in your hearts,
    and you have won your battle with the evil one.

15 Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. 16 For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. 17 And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.

Tori's Comments:

Verses 12 to 14 serve as a beautiful mantra and reminder of who we are in Christ!

It is really hard to say no to the world sometimes. For some reason, I forget just how much richer and beautiful Christ is!


Terrie's Comments:

This passage is sooo rich!  We know Christ!  We are Strong in Christ!  We have won our battle with the evil one!   We are God's Children!  We know the Father!  Our sins have been forgiven through Jesus!  These are all present statements... they state what we already know and have through Christ!  This is great news and worth celebrating.

Warning: Do not love this world or the things it offers you... Jesus is better than everything here.  This world will fade away quicker than we are willing to admit most days but if our faith is in Jesus Christ and His finished work at the cross we will live forever!


Take our personal comments or leave them. We would love to hear what stood out to you about today`s passage and how it encouraged you. Tell us in the comments below!

Day 2 - 1 John 2:1-11

My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous. 2 He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world.

3 And we can be sure that we know him if we obey his commandments. 4 If someone claims, “I know God,” but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth. 5 But those who obey God’s word truly show how completely they love him. That is how we know we are living in him. 6 Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did.

7 Dear friends, I am not writing a new commandment for you; rather it is an old one you have had from the very beginning. This old commandment—to love one another—is the same message you heard before. 8 Yet it is also new. Jesus lived the truth of this commandment, and you also are living it. For the darkness is disappearing, and the true light is already shining.

9 If anyone claims, “I am living in the light,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is still living in darkness. 10 Anyone who loves a fellow believer is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble. 11 But anyone who hates a fellow believer is still living and walking in darkness. Such a person does not know the way to go, having been blinded by the darkness.

Terrie's Comments:
Notice in verses 1-2 it talks about our advocate, Jesus Christ, who pleads our case before God the Father.  And then in verse 2 explains that the reason that He can boldly plead our case is because our sins are atoned for by His blood... not only our sins but the SINS OF ALL THE WORLD!!  That is a lot of sin to bear!  THANK YOU JESUS!!!!!

But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous. 2 He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world.

Living like Jesus did... Following his commandments... Simply to love one another... Love fellow believers.  All fellow believers.  This includes believers no matter which church, denomination, race, culture, country, they are from.  We are to love ALL FELLOW BELIEVERS!  

Lord give us eyes to see our fellow believers as you see them.  Give us an unconditional, all inclusive, compassionate love for all believers world wide.  Amen

Tori's Comments:

I need to walk my talk and love!

I think the reason that we really only need to submit to two commandments is that they're more than enough to strive towards in our lifetimes.

To love others so completely, wholly.....

Take our personal comments or leave them. We would love to hear what stood out to you about today`s passage and how it encouraged you. Tell us in the comments below!

Day 1 - 1 John 1:1-10

We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. 2 This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.5 This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. 6 So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. 7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.

Tori's Comments:

I think sometimes we can forget how REAL God is. Like at the beginning of this passage, Jesus was an actual man who died on a cross for our sins. That is one of the most important things we could ever remember (It also seems to be one of the easiest things to forget!). 

Verse 6- Am I growing in my Christian faith or remaining stagnant? It's more important than it seems, because if I am not living for God, what's the point? He should be what I want to spend all of my free time on! Although I'm not there yet, I hope to :)

Terrie's Comments:

This letter that is one that has had plenty of airtime in my head recently!  It is a book that the Holy Spirit has downloaded a lot of information and revelation about.  

It is important to remember that 1 John is a letter and is meant to be read as a whole.  It is important (and I would recommend it highly to go and read this letter in it's entirety everyday of this challenge) to keep everything in context.

Did you know that 1 John 1:9 is the only verse in the Bible that tells us to confess our sins to receive forgiveness?  What is up with that?  Especially when the rest of the epistles talk about the fact that we are made righteous through Jesus.  And that our sins were nailed to the cross.  When taking a look at 1 John in the fullness, even this letter seems to contradict that statement.  
Also if we need to confess our sins to be forgiven and be made righteous then how can we ever be fully righteous or fully forgiven when we will always have sins that are unknown.  Let's read this in the context of just the few surrounding verses and see what we can find...

7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.

In verse 7 we see that it is stated that we are cleansed from ALL sin.  The next verse is saying if we claim to have no sin we are in denial... then comes the famous verse about confession of our sins.  Followed by "if we claim that we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar"  Basically when we read the famous 1 John 1:9 in context of the surrounding verses we can see that this is referring to realizing that we were born into sin and the only way that we can be saved is by confessing that we needed the blood of Jesus to cleanse us and make us righteous.  If we say that we don't need the blood of Jesus to be righteous in God's sight then we are making God a liar and his word has no place in our lives.  When we place our faith in Jesus Christ and decide to make Him Lord in our lives we are admitting that we need his redemption that was provided when he nailed our sins to the cross.  It does not mean that we need to be in a constant state of repentance and begging God for forgiveness.  Forgiveness is for the benefit of the one doing the forgiving.  The Bible says that God forgives us for His sake.  He has already forgiven us.  We don't have to ask we just need to place our faith (believe God's word) that it is already finished!!!  This is great news indeed.

Take our personal comments or leave them. We would love to hear what stood out to you about today`s passage and how it encouraged you. Tell us in the comments below!